Tabari Artspace presents Limen: Thresholds, a solo exhibition by Egyptian multidisciplinary artist Mohamed Monaiseer, curated by historian and curator Hannah Elsisi. The exhibition delves into the concept of liminality, drawing from ritual anthropology and the Islamic notion of barzakh—a metaphysical realm between life and death, as well as a threshold between material and spiritual worlds. Limen: Thresholds is a poetic exploration of in-betweenness—a space where memory, spirituality, and resilience converge.
Monaiseer’s works traverse this liminal space, blending personal reflections on loss, migration, and revolution with universal themes of transition and transformation. His practice integrates architectural and artisanal motifs from the Islamic world, combining painting, sculpture, installation, sound, and video to create an immersive experience.
Elsisi’s curatorial approach frames barzakh as fertile ground for exploring collective trauma, migration, and ecological change. Through her interpretation, Monaiseer’s artworks become heterotopias—layered spaces of meaning that challenge perceptions of time and place.
The exhibition features a range of materials and techniques. Fragmented 3D-printed installations evoke tombstones, symbolising the disjunction of time and matter. Layered canvases, resembling ancient scrolls or shrouds, are adorned with motifs inspired by Quranic ornamentation and burial garlands. The artist’s innovative use of pigments derived from decomposed leaves and herbs embodies the cyclical connection between life and death.
In a standout video work, a lone figure navigates a burial site in Rashid, Egypt, surrounded by lush vegetation—echoing themes of renewal and Sufi spiritual practices. Birds and ash, recurring elements throughout the show, symbolise transition and transformation, drawing connections between ancient rituals and the modern experience of displacement.
Mohamed Monaiseer about his work:
What does the concept of barzakh mean to you, and how is it reflected in your work in Limen?
Barzakh is an Arabic concept that I have continuously revisited and explored. As I articulated in my interpretation, barzakh is:
When nothingness is confined between two entities, it creates a new element embodied by the spirit without tangible form. It represents a certain degree of metaphorical energy—an assumption without a defined language to explain its meaning. Yet, it could be the ultimate truth beyond nature and the body, something that transcends human perception and the senses.
Barzakh has long been used in mythology and religious contexts to describe the space between life before resurrection and after death. Some refer to it as the grave. In geography, it describes the barrier that separates the fresh waters of rivers from the saltwater of seas without them mixing. If we consider dreams as the boundary between sleep and wakefulness, then the dream is barzakh. If the soul separates the body from the mind, it is also barzakh. And if the human being is a barzakh, they stand between existence and non-existence.
Thus, barzakh, as a value, represents a truth—a space that separates comprehension from understanding without manipulation. It is not a severance but a non-material link, like a bridge or mirror between two things, allowing the transfer of meaning. The mirror, for instance, serves as a barzakh between the body and its reflection.
According to this theory, everything with perceived value is followed by an inverted dimension—a counter-value that reflects the meaning of two entities at the point of zero that separates them, at the barzakh, encompassing their true essence.
Faith itself is barzakh—the link between Creator and creation, between God and humankind.
Hannah Elsisi about the exhibition:
How did your academic and poetic exploration of barzakh influence your curatorial approach to Limen, and how did you navigate aligning your interpretation with Mohamed Monaiseer’s artistic vision of this concept?
I have always been interested in the productive potential of space-times that sit outside of structure, outside of the normal operation of time, history, social mores and political givens. Liminality, and the ritual processes associated with liminal transitions (wars, marriage, carnival, birth, death, revolutions) have thus always occupied centre-stage in my research.
Separately, I head a research centre entitle Mangrove (a rhizome without root or tip, that grows where salt and freshwater meet – the islamic reading of earthly barzakh) that has been preoccupied with Islamicate, West Asian and North African vernaculars of in-betweeness and ambiguity as modes of re-reading questions of identity, migration, colonialism and ecological transition in teh anthropocene.
Mohamed’s work is deeply steeped in all of these sites, questions, processes and concepts – the meeting was made to be and our process of working together, bouncing off each other, came naturally – we spoke a shared language and shared a great deal of references and preoccupations. We would bounce novels and articles, photos and videos, music and stories in voicenotes back and forth as the show came together – these were deep, serious exchanges but at the same time entirely effortless, unforced, organic.
Location: Tabari Artspace, Dubai.
Dates: 17th January – 17th February 2025